welcome week

As we saw tonight at baseball, the Berkeley campus is overrun with freshpeople. There's lots of them, disproportionately lots of them, since other undergrads don't really need to be here until Monday. But instead of simply mocking their gawkiness and clothes, or lusting after their hot, nubile near-jailbaitness, let us ponder the significant events happening in the dorms tonight:

A lonely freshman from Massachusetts begins a lifelong cigarette addiction simply because he wants an excuse to stand outside and talk to the guy across the hall he spotted wearing a System of a Down t-shirt.

A Chemistry major from Orange County desperately tries to think of a way to casually work his SAT score into conversation.

A 19 year-old virgin grabs two condoms from the bowl outside the Health Worker's room, just in case.

An EECS major's heart leaps when he mentions Akira to his roommates, and nobody laughs or even says "What's that?" - they just nod knowingly.

While her roommate listens unaware, a girl plays the first of what will eventually be 324 renditions of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" over the course of the year on her Winamp player.

A future medical career is derailed when an intended Biology major is forced to sing up for two separate 8 am lab sections. He will drop both classes, and enroll in the Haas School of Business two years later.

A nervous freshman boy leans against the wall of the first stall of his co-ed bathroom, going through prime numbers in his head to try and relax enough to be able to urinate. In a nearby shower stall, a different boy whistles as he pees directly into the drain.